Potential

Potential is something that’s really been on my mind lately, and I think it’s because I don’t feel that I’m completely living up to my fullest. Funny though, because I don’t know if anybody really is…but in an attempt at self-improvement I came up with these few thoughts the other night as I was trying to fall asleep. I remember watching an old Simpsons episode where Homer, in attempt to improve sales in Marge’s self-owned pretzel making business, makes a deal with Fat Tony and the mafia to get rid of the competition. Marge’s ex-business partners-turned-rivals respond by hiring the Japanese mafia…fondly known as the Yakuza to even the odds a bit. At the end of the episode there’s an epic mafia war between the Italians and the Japanese. As they’re watching, Homer notices a guy just standing there, arms folded, not moving and dressed all in white. Marge ushers the family quickly inside to avoid confrontation, but Homer complains, commenting that you know the guy in white is gonna do something amazing and he wants to watch. Sure enough, just as they get inside the house you hear his battle cry followed by the sound of someone undoubtedly getting their butt kicked by a well-trained martial artist.

In a roundabout way, I wouldn’t think it uncommon for many of us to want to be like the super ninja in white. When the time comes for performance, no matter the circumstance, we want to be able to perform in the absolute best way we can, and should the need arise to kick some butt…so be it. I love the implications of such a person, because if you think about it, he would have to have an immense amount of self-control to contain all that raw power, and channel it in a direction of his choosing. He’s like some mega energy converter (MEC). Martial arts aside, I think that any skill or personality trait is that way. Inside all of us is a massive amount on energy, albeit in a dormant state. Through training and practice we can learn to convert such dormant energy into active and useful energy.

It’s like learning to throw a baseball. If you practiced throwing every day for six months you would undoubtedly see improvements in your results. However, the nature of throwing a baseball itself has not changed, only your ability to do so.

So then there’s the tricky part. I’ve been tr

ying to figure out the best way to convert that potential energy, into useful and active, perhaps even kinetic energy. How do we become MEC’s ourselves? If I’ve learned anything then really it’s that there is no secret, at least not in the traditional sense where a secret pathway will get you to your destination with little or no effort. Sorry, there are no warp zones in real life. Nor are there cheat codes. That’s actually a good thing though. Just like it’s been discussed before, many times we need the journey to help us prepare for destination.

Humor me for a second, because I’m going to continue using the video game metaphor.

Usually throughout a video game the protagonists gains more abilities and skills with experience. You start out as a simple character with a few basic moves, but the longer you play the game, the more abilities you get, and the stronger you become. The simplest game I can think of to back up my point is

Zelda…any of them will do. You start out with a basic sword and shield and three hearts, but as the game progresses you gain access to bombs, boomerangs, bow and arrows, etc…each item needed in a particular scenario to beat the game.

Honestly our lives are not too much different than that. The more time we spend playing the game, or developing a skill, the more return we get out of it, the better we are at it, and the more adaptation we have in using it in various scenarios.
I was watching the Prestige the other day (SPOILER ALERT…but honestly if you haven’t seen that movie by now you’re way behind), and you see an old Asian man perform a magic trick. Immediately the protagonists try to think of ways of how he was able to do it. The only rational answer, however, would imply that the old man had immense strength, yet when watching him walk he was feeble and required constant assistance, even after the show was over. It’s rather clever foreshadowing, alluding to the rationale that one could be so devoted to their art, so passionate towards the idea that their life was constantly a stage that they would spend their entire lives “performing”. And why not? “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. If we had such devotion towards a good and worthy goal, would that not lead us all to a great and new heights?

Think of Star Trek: First Contact. Captain Picard tells a man in the

21st century that Starfleet was formed after mankind was able to put aside their differences, and devote their time and energy to the common good…which therefore maximized mankind’s potential, at least as far as space travel goes. Granted that that idea is a bit idealistic, nevertheless the desire to go where no man has gone before transcended men’s petty differences and led to the establishment of the greatest accomplishment of mankind in the 24th century. What if we had such passion, dedication, and motivation as those in Starfleet? Perhaps we’ll never see that happen to our civilization, but many inventions we call necessities today came from the hands of such dedicated individuals, anomalies in a broken system.

So here it is…my epiphany. In order to become the white ninja (not to be confused with the white power ranger…stupid Tommy, stealing Kimberly from Jason) I have to not only work and train hard, increasing my level of self-discipline, but I have to be emotionally invested…fully dedicated. It’s the only way to maximize the rate of converting that potential energy we all have, into a skill or attribute that we desire. It’s two mechanism’s working together, the mental and the physical. If one isn’t working as hard as it should then the other tries to compensate…leading to fatigue and problems down the road. The opposite is true too, however. If both mechanisms are working as they should then there’s a synergistic sort of effect that can readily lead to greatness. To quote a line from one of my favorite motivational speakers…

”see you at the top” - Zig Zigler